Departures of all kinds—by air, by ocean, by illness, by alienation, by death—lead the characters to circle one another as though in an entranced dance…. Hughes is a master of understatement, and deftly captures the subtle undercurrent of family life and the danger from the ever-changing world in the 1970s.

— Yiyun Li, author of Kinder Than Solitude

Sexual currents surge as a bruised but glamorous couple strive to go on ‘making life gorgeous’ after the death of their young son. Underhanded transactions and self-serving characters threaten these ambitions, and the privileged life in New York and London, late sixties, is not without its costs. Hughes writes with stunning economy: fully realized characters are made with a stroke in this most seductive, irresistible fiction.

— Christine Schutt, author of Prosperous Friends

A beautiful new voice in fiction.

— Time Out New York

A writer of dexterity and imagination.

— New York Times Book Review

Hughes keeps her prose close to her characters’ thoughts, and doles out the most crucial information on the sly. . . . [Her] careful but unobtrusive organization gives even the saddest revelations . . . an air of the miraculous.